Environmental groups sue over potential use of public lands, say alternatives not properly considered

Three environmental groups have sued to block the Interior Department’s plant to spur large-scale solar development on public lands across six Western states.

The lawsuit was filed in late February by the Desert Protective Council, long active in San Diego and Imperial counties; the Seattle-based Western Lands Project; and the broader-based Western Watershed Project.

It asserts that the federal government failed to properly consider alternatives that would focus development on already degraded or developed lands, ignoring solar alternatives that would be less damaging to the environment, more efficient and less costly to the public.

The Interior and Energy departments have hailed the plan, outlined under a Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, as a way to facilitate faster, smarter utility-scale solar development on public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.

Described as a road map for solar development, the plan weighs prospective sites by quantity of sunshine, energy transmission potential and relatively low conflict with biological, cultural and historic resources. But it also allows for “responsible” utility-scale solar development on lands outside of 17 designated solar energy zones.

Janine Blaeloch, of Seattle-based Western Lands Project, contends the plan will needlessly industrialize public lands, including sensitive desert habitats, while overlooking the full possibilities of rooftop solar and an existing catalog of renewable energy sites on degraded land and former mines compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency.

“We are part of a handful of groups that are trying to raise awareness of these alternatives to help the people understand that there’s no need to be industrializing the desert,” she said.

In the lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for Southern California, the plaintiffs contend that the federal solar plan failed to consider a sufficiently wide array of alternatives.

An Interior Department spokeswoman declined to comment on a matter of pending litigation. The department and its Bureau of Land Management used a stakeholder process to consult with renewable energy developers and a long list of major environmental groups, such as Audubon California, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Wilderness Society — groups that Blaeloch contends have “bought into” the urgent need for solar projects on public land.